1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to the field of networking, and more specifically to a network node for attachment to switch fabrics.
2. Background Information and Description of Related Art
Many modern communications applications have demanding resource requirements that are difficult to scale. An effective way to scale such applications is to distribute individual algorithms onto different processing elements and interconnect those processing elements on a switch fabric. This arrangement may support the high-bandwidth data flows that must exist between the algorithms.
A high performance switch fabric arrangement may be achieved by use of various proprietary multi-stage switching technologies, but the performance is achieved at a high cost in dollars and in features, such as scalability. In order to achieve high performance at a reasonable cost, current approaches include the use of network technologies such as Ethernet, InfiniBand, PCI-Express/Advanced Switching, and Rapid IO. However, these network technologies are immature and still evolving and are limited in some features critical to network performance, such as classes of service and congestion control.